A Side of Rice: Volume 1, Issue 01 by A Side of Rice

VOLUME 1: ISSUE 01

Volume 1: Issue 01

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR There was a class I took my sophomore year in college where we talked about the failure of the early 20th century Chinese imagination in the reconfiguration of Western genre fiction. Specifically, it was about the failure of the Chinese imagination to come up with any speculative worlds that deviated from the colonial order produced by Western speculative fiction. So where Western science fiction presented itself as navigator, explorer, and conqueror of alien and heathen alike, all Chinese sci-fi seemed able to do was to extract itself from heathendom and place itself at the head of the imperial order. This is not, of course, unilaterally true, but it was one of the concepts we worked with throughout the course. And it’s something that’s stuck with me throughout these past many, many (okay, two) years. What is a speculative world? And to what extent can we divorce it from our real one? To what extent is it a reaction to our real one? Those are some of the questions I was curious about going into this issue. And this last one: are humans even capable of producing truly speculative futures when everything that makes up who we are is rooted in the non-speculative? This was before the election. Then the election happened, and it was like every nightmare, every dystopian future, every strange, alternate timeline coalesced into reality, and suddenly there was more a need than ever for both cynicism and for hope, for both resistance in both the real world and continued creativity in fictional realms. So we’re bringing you this mere days before the inauguration in the hopes that it can bring you some light in dark days, and to propel you to think even more than you have before about what the future will look like, about what you want the future to look like. Best, Alyza Liu

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NON-FICTION 1-7

FICTION 8-16

ARTWORK 17-27

EXTRA 28-32

CREDITS 33

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NON-FICTION

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A CONVERSATION WITH S. QIOUYI LU by Alyza Liu

So, to get everyone on the same page, would you mind first doing a basic introduction of yourself and your work, and how you got into writing SFF? I’m S. Qiouyi Lu; I’m a writer, artist, translator, and narrator. My recent publications include “Her Sacred Spirit Soars” in Strange Horizons and “Th Fifth Lttr” in Daily Science Fiction. You can find a full bibliography of my work at my site, http://s.qiouyi.lu. I’ve written stories since I was young, but I didn’t get into writing and submitting short stories seriously until 2015, when I went to Wiscon for the first time. There, I realized that there’s a thriving speculative fiction community and many, many magazines with amazing work. Sparked by my friends’ support, I started writing again after a period of not writing, and I started sending out my stories. That’s really cool! So I know that more recently, diversity has been a really dominant topic in the SFF community, the most high profile events having to do with the emergence of the Sad & Rabid Puppies, as well as with NK Jemison having won the Hugo for Best Novel this year, and then Liu Cixin having won last year with the first translated work of science fiction.

And one of the things that most interests and excites me about science fiction in particular is how much it’s a genre both limited by the past yet unconstrained by the future, and what I’m curious about is how you find yourself navigating such an often contentious atmosphere? There are always going to be people who find my existence in the SFF world contentious, whether it’s because of my race, my gender, or any other aspect of my identity. I’ve come to a point where I no longer care about pleasing those people or catering to their whims. I write what I write, and my stories are informed by my experiences and viewpoints; I hope that they can resonate with others and offer representation for some marginalized groups. I think people forget that every story is informed by identity, by experience; every choice has some sort of politics behind it, even neutrality.

Because this is an Asian American zine, I do want to talk about how your identity as an Asian American informs what you write. From my perspective outside the SF community it seems like there’s a real renaissance of Asiam speculative fiction now, and of translated science fiction from Asia––and of course, you yourself do some translation. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what “Asian” or “Asian American” science fiction means to you? What sorts of possibilities does it explore? What sorts of futures? I think it’s really difficult to talk about what “Asian” or “Asian American” speculative fiction means—it’s even hard for me to talk about what something like Chinese speculative fiction means to me; each category is just so broad and there’s so much diversity within groups that it’s hard to make any kind of generalization. I can really only speak for myself and my own experiences, and even then it’s difficult for me to pinpoint conscious ways in which my background informs my writing. Often it’s an unconscious melding that can only be picked apart in retrospect. I think there’s also a temptation to look for easy answers and digestible descriptions of Asian/Asian American literature, but we can really only examine each author individually, as the stories stand on their own and each person’s background is so different.

Then can you talk a little about what writing science fiction means to you? What is it about science fiction as a genre that is appealing? What sorts of possibilities do you, personally, want to explore? I write speculative fiction because I enjoy having a broader palette of possibilities to work from—there’s more to imagine, more to explore. It’s a fascinating exercise in worldbuilding and character development because everything still needs to have verisimilitude, even in a far-fetched scenario. Plus, I find that it’s the strange situations and stories that reveal the most about humanity. As for what I want to explore, I want to write stories where Asian characters can be the leads, where nonbinary genders and a multitude of different sexual orientations are normalized, worlds where people like me can exist and be whatever we wish to be. Where people who aren’t men are important too and have friendships and other

Volume 1: Issue 01 relationships with each other. Worlds filled with magic and the strange and alternate worlds and scenarios that offer a glimpse into what could be.

Do you see science fiction, then, as a space of possibility? Definitely! Speculative fiction takes possibility as its premise—hence the name, which I prefer to use over just “science fiction” because speculative fiction encompasses science fiction, fantasy, horror, and the things that don’t quite fit and are in the interstices.

Because one of the things––other than the possibility of science fiction––that I was personally interested in confronting for this issue of A Side of Rice is also sort of the blind spots and limitations of sci fi. In sophomore year, I remember taking a class called Literature of Excess, which focused a lot on speculative fiction, about the fantastic and the grotesque in the early 20th century Chinese literary imagination. One of the things we had to deal with was the fact that a lot of the science fiction, especially around the turn of the century, was very much informed by these notions of colonialism, and were very much shaped by the First Encounter. One of the things that really struck me is that science fiction is in some ways limited by its roots, even when written in a specifically anti-colonial or even progressive context, and that some of the Chinese authors we read replicated these structures of this almost imperial science fiction. I’m not exactly clear about what I’m asking, but more or less do you feel like we are able to confront and resist this through the expansion of who gets to write sci fi, who gets to tell their stories? Are there still blind spots, or is the sheer diversity of the people who write sci fi now enough to expand the limitations? I think that, even with an increased number of voices and diversity of voices within speculative fiction, there are still margins and centers. Anglophone spec fic from the US and UK still seems to dominate, and other voices often get drowned out. There’s often a pressure to conform stories to certain Western structures that might not fit all stories. Oppressive structures can still be replicated in well-meaning communities; decolonizing

and decentering literature from its traditional centers will take major effort and shifts in thought and action.

Is there anything that you think readers or publishers can do to decolonise and decentre literature from the Anglophonic West? Read authors outside the Anglophonic West; boost their voices and their work. If editing, solicit from marginalized groups. Support translations and translation projects. It’s all more complicated than that, really, but I think attention and financial support are the usual first lines.

That’s a practical start! In that vein, do you have any recommendations for Asian or Asian American spec fic? I love Alyssa Wong’s work—others I really enjoy are JY Yang, Nicasio Andres Reed, Isabel Yap, and Usman Malik. Ted Chiang and Ken Liu also put out fantastic work, as does Zen Cho.

Thank you for the recs, and thank you for such a good interview! Are there other places we can follow you and keep up with your work? Of course! You can find me on Twitter at @sqiouyilu, and I keep my site updated with my latest work: http://s.qiouyi.lu

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RECOMMENDED SCI-FI BOOKS

The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu

Control by Lydia Kang

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu

Angelfall by Susan Ee

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RECOMMENDED SCI-FI BOOKS

The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin

The Silence of Six by E.C. Myers

The Kite of Stars and Other Stories by Dean Francis Alfar

The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard

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RECOMMENDED SCI-FI SHORT STORIES The Last Son of Tomorrow by Greg van Eekhout (read here)

Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers by Alyssa Wong (read here)

You Cannot Fight the War by Aditya Bidikar (read here)

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RECOMMENDED SCI-FI SHORT STORIES The Weight of a Blessing by Aliette de Bodard (read here)

Hwangâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Billion Brilliant Daughters by Alice Sola Kim (read here)

We Planted the Sad Child, and Watched by Rahul Kanakia (read here)

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FICTION

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by Alyza Liu

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ARTWORK

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百mogü77 by Danni Shen The ongoing 百mogü77 series takes inspiration from a childhood of mushroom cuts, bi-lingual dreams, Ming-dynasty rubbings, the Sino-diaspora. Sprouting from personal narrative, whimsically futurist with a hint of the perverse, dao, each draws on remembering in a time of forgetting, through art-making that never takes itself too seriously. Medium: Prints on handmade Xuan paper. Each one is an edition of 100

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Plastic Lotus by Nayza M. Being biracial and a child of diaspora, I only have a vague idea about my culture. For that reason I lean on the comforts of Chinatown--in spite of it largely being a mock-up of the real thing. There is a lot pressure to be authentic, but ultimately it is my experience as an Asian-American that defines my identity. I wanted to communicate that.

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EXTRA

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MUSIC RECOMMENDATIONS JAMCOME ON BABY by Yoon Mi-rae RUN FROM YOUR LOVE by Khalil Fong ft. FiFi Rong TALAMAK by Toro y Moi TRAVELING (TWILIGHT EXPRESS MIX) by Utada Hikaru (f-remix) UNDERBART by Little Dragon IDIOT by Faye Wong CLOCKS by Koi Hai Toh Sahee - Penn Masala CRANE LIGHTNING by RZA

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ASIAN CHARACTERS IN SCI-FI

SHARON “ATHENA” AGATHON

TORY FOSTER

MINHO

(Battlestar Galactica)

(The Maze Runner)

ENSIGN HOSHI SATO

SULU

DR. ELISABETH SHANNON

(Star Trek: Enterprise)

(Star Trek)

(Terra Nova)

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ASIAN CHARACTERS IN SCI-FI

TAKASHI SHIROGANE

KEITH KOGANE

MONTY GREEN

(Voltron)

(The 100)

CHIRRUT IMWE

BODHI ROOK

BAZE MALBUS

(Star Wars: Rogue One)

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ASIAN CHARACTERS IN SCI-FI

SUN-HWA KWON

JIN-SOO KWON

SAYID JARRAH

(Lost)

MAKO MORI

KALA DANDEKAR

SUN BAK

(Pacific Rim)

(sense8)

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CREDITS CONTRIBUTERS

NAYZA M.

I’m Nayza, I am 18 and Pakistani + Laotian. I spend a lot of time reading Western comics, watching bad horror movies, and drinking gas station coffee.

Alyza Liu - Editor in Chief

DANNI SHEN

Danni Shen is an artist, curator, and writer based in New York. She is also a contributor to Hyperallergic, Two Coats of Paint, and SCREEN界面 a bilingual digital journal dedicated to media art. Find her on Instagram at @ danni_sh and curatorial exercising at contemporary art: sinodiaspora.

THE TEAM

Alyza is a Chinese American, first-gen immigrant, bilingual, artist/writer (aren’t we all) and a proud aficionado of 狗血剧 and 武侠剧. Her current five year plan includes: crying, drinking tea, adopting a cat, writing a novel, and hopefully breaking into the publishing industry via her [obviously superb] #editorialskills.

Jessica Man - Submissions Coordinator Jessica is an American-born Chinese hurtling at terrifying speed towards the graduate program in Asian American Studies at UCLA. She writes lots of things and hopes that some of them will be good. SDG

Mnrupe Virk - Editor Mnrupe is an Indian-Canadian proposal writer and pretending to be an adult. Hobbies include: drawing, reading (anything and everything), making playlists, and crying over her bachelor’s degree.

Tangmo Cecchini - Visual Director Tangmo is an illustrator and owner of the fluffiest bunny. She dabbles in sewing, divination, and baking as well. You can find her artwork over at www.artoftangmo.com.